Strength Lab – Les Mills

 

Strength Lab is Les Mills latest seasonal program offering. My role on this project as art director was to develop the visual style, research, create mock-up videos, billboard and poster layout concepts, build mood boards to brief grip team, shoot and grade still photography, and work directly with the program creators to bring their vision to life.

Strength Lab is the continuation of a good thing.

Gym-goers loved Strength Development, so much so that the programme ran for almost 6 months. The class was a hit and Les Mills wanted to give members more.

Strength Lab felt like a natural progression from previous work, the patterns had been created, the work was outlined, and everyone knew their roles. The only difference for us was how much more can we push the campaign? Realistically the campaign can’t be too far different from the past, but it can go a little further than before. We must be careful to never alienate members, but also careful to push a little more each time.

Sadly due to COVID restrictions we were unable to secure any venues to shoot at. This meant back to our usual space at Les Mills. The decision was made to work with production company Brewery to create a new look, a “V2” look. We set out to colour the space, flood the walls with orange light and darken the area to create a more ambient space, one that was familiar but new.

The art direction was a simple advance of the Strength Development look, but flooded with colour. Think Harrison Ford in Blade Runner 2049. The space was then blacked out and lit to ensure we only had very small parts of the space on display. 

 Brewery stepped in to shoot the video while I worked to shoot the stills. Again this was all shot over 6 hours, with back to back photo/video shooting happening. 

As with the previous shoots, a good understanding of roles and intended outputs meant we stuck to schedule and got the shots with ease. Many of the talent hadn’t been in front of a camera before but appeared as naturals on the day.

I’m hoping to update this section shortly with images of the billboards insitu.

Design Director: Rei Konza
Art Director/Photographer: Chris Smith
Videography: Brewery
Video Editor: Ben Claasen